Time for a laugh, I think. The best thing to come out of the whole Tamihere shemozzle must surely be the excellent Hairy McLairy parody aired on Morning Report today after whizzing around the Internet this week. DPF has the MP3 here.

And I am eternally indebted to PA reader Martin Hermans for drawing my attention to 'America We Stand As One', a great steaming, heaving slab of patriotic soft rock that, unbelievably, is not the work of Trey Parker and Matt Stone, but a heartfelt tune by TV stuntman 'Dangerous' Dennis Madalone.

And the participants of this discussion forum have been discussing whether is it, in fact, The Gayest Thing Ever. I think this post summed it up: "Now, understand that I don't use the term "gay" when deriding something. I think it's an insult, saying that homosexuality is as bad as whatever the thing is. But, after seeing this, I can't help but paraphrase Eric Cartman and say that that was the most fucking gayest thing I've seen."

Personally, I think you've just got to accept that "gay" is a word that won't be tied down. I've actually had this conversation with the kids: pointing out that there are two (well, alright, three) meanings of "gay", including the South Park meaning (not that I actually let them watch South Park) and the meaning that applies to our good gay friends. They don't seem confused by it.

This just in: a Russian court has cleared The Simpsons of moral degeneracy. The case comes on the heels of a move by Russian MPs to have the cartoon reclassified adults-only, because, among other things, it "introduce[s] antagonism between children and parents." The Izvestia newspaper's response was quite funny: "They reacted like this to a fairly innocent episode of The Simpsons. What would they say if they saw South Park or Beavis and Butthead?"

Libz' spokesman and Free Radical contributor Peter Cresswell has entered blogdom with a new blog called Not PC (my normal practice is to pour scorn on empty banging-on about political correctness, but I'll let him off on account of it also being a play on his initials). He's remembering Toy Love, among other things. Simon Grigg, who was very much there at the time, has blogged in a similar vein.

Jon Stewart nails it again (QuickTime clip) as regards the bizarre and scary comments from Republican legislators in the wake of the Schiavo business. First among them, of course, wantonly corrupt House majority leader (and hardline Christian conservative) Tom DeLay. Slate has provided a handy scorecard of DeLay's various ethical calamities - the latest of which is the revelation that more than half a million dollars worth of political donations went to his wife and daughter. Not for the first time, I'm bound to think that in a Parliamentary democracy, he would have been forced to resign long ago.

And how 'bout this? After Power Line and friends have noisily convinced themselves that the notoriously Republican Party Schiavo memo was in fact a wicked Democratic plot the equal of Rathergate … turns out it wasn't A Republican Party counsel has admitted to writing the memo, but is having unfortunate memory lapses as to its distribution. No apology from Power Line, of course. Just more sweaty con-spiracy theorising.

Wonkette points out that it's not the first time the Senator involved, Mel Martinez, has blamed spooky ghost writers for documents emerging from his office.

But it gets much weirder. The author of the memo has also apparently admitted to being 'Curveball', the wildly and wholly inaccurate "source" for much of the Iraqi "intelligence" used to press the case for war. Not for the first time, it seems reasonable to ask: WTF?